Fast week...

I'll tell you what...time needs to slow down just a tad! September flew by, and now October is following suit! What's the hurry??

Last week was a blur of good things. My mom and step-dad were in town for a week, and while I didn't get to spend nearly as much time with my mom as I'd have liked, it was nice to get to visit with them here for a change (instead of us going to Florida).

Sadly, I took very few photos from my mom's visit. This is one of them. Mom, Ralph and Emma.

Last weekend was also the local Apple & Arts Festival, which Kevin and the kids always take part in (I go up for a few hours and walk around...they do the work!).

The shingle mill, where Kevin (on the right) spends most of his time at the festival.

Amid the visiting and the fall festivities, I tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy with regard to our school work, the gym and our fencing/climbing days, though everything got modified to accommodate the extra activities. One thing that was a constant throughout, though, was the knitting. I am working away on my socks, both the Zombies and the Mystery Socks for the Soctoberfest KAL. Also making some progress on the girlie's sweater, but mostly it's the socks that have my attention right now.

Lest I bore you with any more chatter, how about some pictures? (And warning -- there will be another picture of the mystery sock in this bunch, so don't look at the last photo if you don't want to see it!)

Apple & Arts Festival purchase #1: apples. Half of this bag has already been cooked and used in a pie. Yum.

Apple & Arts Festival purchase #2: freshly ground grains; in the jars there is whole wheat flour, buckwheat flour and cornmeal. I love using this stuff! So fresh and good! It all needs to be kept refrigerated or frozen since there are no preservatives in any of it, thus I put some in the jars and some in vacuum packages to use over time.

Apple & Arts Festival purchase #3: I usually don't purchase much in the line of the "arts" that are offered at these festivals anymore, both because I don't really need any more crap in my life and also because most of it is pretty country-themed, and I am not much of a country-themed person at this point in my life. Pottery, however, always calls to me. I found these buttons at the only pottery vendor at the festival...they're kind of quirky. Bigger than buttons I'd usually buy, but I thought they'd be neat to use one at a time for buttoned neck warmers or something. More than that and they'd get pretty heavy.

The Zombie lives and is coming along quite nicely! It's actually a couple more inches up the leg at this point. And look! I turned my first toe-up heel...

A gusset heel, it was very easy to do. I ended up with a little gap at the top of each heel where I rejoined the stitches in the round to the instep, but I think I know how to avoid that on the second sock. I'll just stitch these up to close them when I'm done.

And finally...the mystery sock. Clue #2 finished on the first one...

What a crazy-pretty sock this is turning out to be! It looks even lovelier from the side view, but both of those that I look on the sock blocker turned out blurry. Will try again later.

Oh, and though I have no pictures of the evening (or at least none that turned out well on my cell phone), my friend Angela and I spent a very loud night last Saturday at the Social Distortion concert, which was awesome. Totally love their music. (I will say, though, either I'm getting old, the acoustics of the Ches-a-rena leave something to be desired, or the people working the sound for the two opening bands were on crack because it was painfully loud at points, like I thought my ear drums might explode -- and that's saying something, live music lover that I am, the louder the better. But not so much in this case.)

Lastly...our VoaT photoblog is focusing on the theme "Small" this week. Tomorrow is the last day for it, as a new theme will start on Sunday. Stop by and visit! :)

Yarn as home decor...

Check it out!

These are tiny balls of sock yarn that I got through a swap at Spring Fling last April for the purpose of doing this mini-mitred square sock yarn blanket, which I don't have a dream of starting anytime soon. In the mean time, I thought these balls were just too cute to keep hidden away in a Ziploc bag. Yesterday, when I was at Pier 1 on my continuingly frustrating search for some new year-around wreaths for the house, I found this hurricane globe. Perfect! Now I can enjoy the look of all those tiny balls every day until I actually choose to knit with them. Yarn as art, in a totally different way than usual. Love it!

And how about some pictures of yarn used in more traditional ways? One FO and some WIPs (SPOILER ALERT! The last picture is of my first Mystery Sock '09 cuff...if you're doing this KAL and don't want to see what the cuff looks like, don't scroll all the way to the last picture!): 

First, the FO: my September charity hat...woo. LOL Just a plain vanilla hat made with some CPY Taso:

Next, the Heather Hoodie Vest (pattern in Fall 2009 Knitscene) I'm making for the girlie using Nashua Woolie Stripes. 

This is as far as I've gotten on the back, but it's a good shot of the pretty cabling in the pattern. hopefully I'll continue to make progress on it even while I'm working away on Socktoberfest socks.

And speaking of Socktoberfest socks...here is the pair I'm making out of the Zombie yarn:

There's a big orange blob on my zombie! Does that mean it's name should be Blob Zombie? Ahahahahahaaa! Ahem. (The zombie puns...I'm just not running out of them.) 

Notice anything different about this sock than all of the other socks I've ever made? Yes! I started from the toe! I took Wendy Johnson's Heels & Toes for Toe Up Socks class at Spring Fling, and then promptly ignored everything I learned because I still found the thought of the reversed process intimidating. I mean, I've always done my socks cuff down and it has always worked just fine, thankyouverymuch. Why change? (Wow...that is the same horrible argument so many people use for not making beneficial changes in the world! Ack!) 

Then the other night, as I thought about what pattern I wanted to do -- originally it was going to be a broken rib hiking sock -- I realized I wanted a little more of a challenge, so I decided to try toe up. I had to watch a YouTube video to refresh myself on Judy's Magic Cast-On to start the toe, but it was really easy and the rest was just common sense. 

As it turned out, the yarn started to pool quite vigorously after I got through the toe, and while I'm not horrified by pooling in general, it wasn't doing anything for me in the broken rib pattern. So I ripped back the patterned part and started over, deciding to just do a standard stockinette sock, but adding a cable along the left instep edge. (Thus, this is the left sock. The right sock will have the cable along the right instep edge.) Liking this much better.

Lastly, the cuff of my first Mystery Sock (last chance to turn back!):

I'm having the hardest time capturing the true color of this yarn. I think natural light is going to be key to getting right right. It actually looks like a stone-washed denim when it's knit up...not as gray and washed out as it looks here. But at least you can see the pretty openwork in the middle of the ribbing.

Socktoberfest!

Pardon me, but there seems to be a zombie on your swift...

Why yes there is! What better colorway to knit in the month of October, the month of Halloween, the month of Socktoberfest than one named "Zombie"?

This is Foot Prints yarn from The Unique Sheep, which I picked up at the Cloverhill Yarn booth at Maryland Sheep & Wool last May. I have been waiting for the perfect time to knit up these crazy-fun colors, and now's that time! I had a pattern in mind for them of my own devising, but I'm going to hold off on that because the design would get lost in the colors, I think.

Don't these yarn cakes remind you of those round bales of hay that you see sitting out in fields? But really, it's a zombie ball! Hahahahaaa! Ahem...

Instead, I'm going to make myself a pair of Broken Rib Socks (Rav link) from the first 101 One-Skein Wonders book. The first pair I made turned out to be far too small for either me or my daughter to wear, so they ended up with my tiny-footed daughter-in-law! I've wanted to make another pair for me, and I think this yarn will be perfect.

So, that's my first Socktoberfest project. My second will be the Socktoberfest Mystery Sock socks from the pattern that Kirsten Kapur has created for this year. I did this KAL last year, and it was a lot of fun, though I crashed and burned after the first three weeks (I went on vacation and got rather sidetracked) and didn't end up finishing the foot and toe of the socks until several months later. Hopefully this year I'll stay caught up!

ETA: The first part of the pattern is up! Yeay!

For that pair, I'll be using this (sorry..bad coloring from nasty indoor-at-night photo)...

...some Schaefer Yarns Nichole in what is really a lovely semi-solid blue-grayish color (no purple/pink tinge like this picture wants to make you think). I have to admit, this is not a color I would have chosen to buy, but it was part of my goodie bag that I got at The Loopy Ewe Spring Fling last April, so I've held onto it. Lo, the yarn Kirsten used for making her pair of the Mystery Socks -- Nichole! Clearly it was meant to be! And since I want to make both of these socks at the same time to have them both (theoretically finished) by the end of October, I split the skein perfectly in two! Each of those balls weighs 2 5/8 ounces exactly. Am I good or what? LOL

So...it's here! Socktoberfest is underway! And as much as I really, really should go to bed now, I think I'm going to go cast on my first Zombie sock first. Let the socks begin!

Help! There's a Zombie on Nichole! Ahhhh!!!